T.rex Discovery Center researchers continue to study new dinosaur

Research confirms that a partial skeleton discovered in Saskatchewan is a new species of plant-eating dinosaur.

The new species has been named Thescelosaurus assiniboiensis* after
Saskatchewan's historic District of Assiniboia, in which it was found.
The 66 million year old specimen was collected from the Frenchman River
Valley near Eastend in 1968 by Albert E. Swanston while working for the
Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History (now the Royal Saskatchewan
Museum) in Regina.

Nearly 40 years after it was collected, the specimen, was studied and
identified as a new species, as part of a Masters thesis by Caleb M.
Brown at the University of Calgary (now a Ph.D. student at the
University of Toronto), his supervisor, Dr. Anthony P. Russell and
co-author Clint Boyd of the University of Texas at Austin. The new
dinosaur species is described in the December 2011 edition of the
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

"It's not every day a new species of dinosaur is identified and this is a
great reminder of the richness of Saskatchewan's fossil record,"
Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport Minister Bill Hutchinson said. "It
also shows the significance of ongoing studies at the Royal Saskatchewan
Museum and how the institution and its personnel play an important role
in working with scientists and research centres across Canada and
around the world."

"Although similar dinosaur species have been found south of the border,
in Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota, Thescelosaurus
assiniboiensis has a number of unique traits that distinguish it from
its relatives," Brown said. "The new dinosaur lived alongside
Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops at the very end of the age of dinosaurs
and is notable for its small size compared to other contemporary
herbivores - similar in size to a white-tailed deer. While we know a
great deal about the large dinosaurs of this time, our understanding of
small-bodied dinosaur diversity and abundance remains comparatively
poor. This discovery suggests smaller dinosaurs were more diverse than
previously thought immediately before the extinction event."

The work of the staff of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, both at its
research station at the T.rex Discovery Centre in Eastend and in Regina,
continues to increase understanding of Saskatchewan's fossil heritage.
Discoveries of additional new types of animal and plant life are
expected as their fossils continue to emerge from the Saskatchewan
sediments. They will in turn be studied by other scientists around the
world.